Subject: shop service
Question:

1995 eclipse, 2.0 GS-T manual

i hope you can help me out

i just had my water pump replaced from a shop. and when i got my car back i noticed my engine/interior/steering wheel vibrated quite a bit, and it seemed my timing was off. i know all about the balance shaft/crankshaft sprocket stuff from the vfaq site, and i brought my car back to the shop and told them all about it. well they said they checked everything and said that the timing was correct, but it still does not drive the way it did before i dropped it off to them. and my oil pressure gauge is real low now too when i idle, but when i am driving the needle likes to hang right above the mid mark. i don't know if this would matter but last year my harmonic balancer broke while i was driving and i ended up having to replace the cylinder head.

my question is this, is there anything you can think of that might not be right, i don't know how much i trust this shop, they first ordered the wrong water pump because they didn't even know my car had a turbo.
thank you for your time
Answer: Kevin,
Finding a shop that has decent experience with turbo Eclipes is tough. I had brought my 1G Eclipse to a shop I thought was good to have my timing belt fixed once, but they screwed up the same way your shop did. When I dropped my car off, the car drove fine. Though after they replaced the timing belt, there was bad vibrations and oil pressure was lower.

The shop swore up and down they installed the timing belt and balance belt correctly. But it turned out they did in fact install the balance belt incorrectly. That belt was installed with the balance shaft out of phase with the oil pump sprocket, which caused the bad vibration and lower oil pressure. There's also the chance they installed the balance belt too tight, and it snapped the first time they started the car. The main timing belt is probably installed correctly and your timing may still appear correct to the mechanics, but I believe they screwed up the balance belt.

Take your car back and insist they re-install the balance belt. And if you ever need to have your timing belts changed again, either find a shop that really knows what they are doing, or just take it to the dealership. The dealership may charge a little more, but they at least know what they're doing.
Good luck!